Information on efficiency as an aspect of self-regulation in university departments

151 Information on efficiency as an aspect of self-regulation in university departments Timo Näppilä Introduction Birnbaum (1988) defines the academic organisation and its leadership within the context of a cybernetic institution. Birnbaumʼs theoretical model was based on a dynamic and nonlinear open system and first-order cybernetic regulatory processes. The main idea of cybernetic regulation is based on constructing dynamic loops in which the element of a system affects the environment, which in turn affects the system. This interactive dynamic between a system and its environment may lead to an amplifying or stabilising process. The process begins when some change in the external or internal environment leads to an organisational response that alters the value of some variable. If that variable is being monitored by some formal or informal group (a sensing unit), and if that change of value moves it beyond acceptable limits, the group will attempt to influence the administration (or some other controlling unit) to change the organisation’s response until the variable moves back into an acceptable range. In the Finnish context, Hölttä (see Hölttä 1995; Hölttä & Nuotio 1995; Hölttä & Karjalainen 1997) has also studied both Birnbaum’s cybernetic institutional management model and self-regulation. According to Hölttä and 152 Timo Näppilä Elias Pekkola & Jussi Kivistö & Vuokko Kohtamäki & Yuzhuo Cai & Anu Lyytinen (Eds.) Karjalainen (1997), the system of the flexible workload of university teachers was based on the idea of creating stabilising, self-correcting cybernetic control loops into the management system. The most important issue in creating self-regulating control loops is that this information ‒ which is usually most confidential and sensitive to individuals ‒ is fed back to academic departments and heads of departments, with no involvement from administrators in its interpretation. My doctoral dissertation (Näppilä 2012) examined the theoretical information on efficiency as part of researcher’s and teacher’s self-regulation in university departments. Successful self-regulation requires information on efficiency, in other words, the optimal use of resources. This kind of information is information for researchers and teachers, not for their managers or administrators. It is also important to know what skills, values, technologies and knowledge individual researchers and teachers will undertake in their work. I utilised new theoretical assumptions from systems theories (autopoiesis, self-organisation) and second-order cybernetics. My contribution to the existing theory was that individual self-regulation with information on efficiency was taken into account. This theoretical modification will help in re-thinking the ideas of self-regulation at universities. The cybernetics of academic organisation and leadership According to Birnbaum (1988), open systems are dynamic and nonlinear. System parts are themselves systems; they constantly change as they interact with themselves and with the environment, and the system evolves over time. Both people and colleges exist as part of an open system. They interact with other elements of those systems and the environment in which they are imbedded. Structural (rules, regulations, structures) and social (interaction of individuals in groups) controls are organisational feedback loops which are sensitive to selected factors in the environment. Negative feedback loops provide information that something is wrong. They allow systems to sense 153 Information on efficiency as an aspect of self-regulation in university departments Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives on Higher Education Management and Transformation when some important variable is outside its acceptable limits (that is, outside the organisation’s constraint set) and attempt to correct it. A thermostat is an example of a self-correcting, cybernetic control system with a feedback loop. It turns the furnace on when the temperature of the environment falls below the pre-set limit and turns it off when the temperature returns to the desired level. This keeps the temperature within an acceptable range. The cybernetic process is depicted as a causal loop. The process begins when some change in the external or internal environment leads to an organisational response that alters the value of some variable. If that variable is being monitored by some formal or informal group (a sensing unit), and that change of value moves it beyond acceptable limits, the group will attempt to influence the administration (or some other controlling unit) to change the organisation’s response until the variable moves back into an acceptable range (Birnbaum 1988). According to Birnbaum (1988), in a cybernetic system, an organisation’s subsystems respond to the limited number of inputs (students, money and knowledge) to monitor their operation and make corrections and adjustments as necessary; organisational responses are not based on measuring or improving their output (educated students, knowledge and skilled labour). This is possible when systems create feedback loops that tell them when thing are going wrong. Systems receive several and different kinds of inputs from the environment, transforming them in some way, and then return them to the environment. Outputs do not disappear (as they do in closed systems) but return to the environment, where they may again become inputs (alumni). The main idea behind cybernetic regulation is based on constructing dynamic loops in which the element of a system affects the environment, which in turn affects the system. This interactive dynamic between a system and its environment may lead to an amplifying or stabilising process (Birnbaum 1988, 47–51). Cybernetic systems can function effectively only if environmental disturbances are sensed and negative feedback is then generated by organisational subunits that monitor these data (1988, 197). If the increase in the cause variable increases the value of the affected variable, which in turn 154 Timo Näppilä Elias Pekkola & Jussi Kivistö & Vuokko Kohtamäki & Yuzhuo Cai & Anu Lyytinen (Eds.) increases the value of the original cause variable, the process is called positive feedback. The target of university management in this system setting is the opposite: to introduce self-correcting or stabilising processes. If one element or sub-system is unbalanced by an external impulse, the built-in mechanisms of the system stabilise it and balance returns between the system elements and the sub-system. This is called negative feedback (1988, 181–183). The open systems view suggests that we should always organise with the environment in mind (see Morgan 1998, 42). The organisation is typically viewed as an open system in constant interaction with its environment, transforming inputs into outputs as a means of creating the conditions necessary for survival. Changes in the environment are viewed as presenting challenges, to which the organisation must respond (1998, 215). Thus, to selfregulate, learning systems must be able to sense, monitor and scan significant aspects of their environment, relate this information to the operating norms that guide system behaviour, detect significant deviations from these norms and initiate corrective action when discrepancies are detected (1998, 77). Regarding the cybernetics of observed systems we may consider to be firstorder cybernetics, the observer enters the system by stipulating the system’s purpose. We may call this a “first-order stipulation” (von Foerster 1979, 2). Creating self-regulating control loops and information systems The University of Joensuu initiated a management reform in the late 1980s as a response to the new national higher education steering policy and reform of the public sector. The university was also driven to find its competitive advantage as a result of the increased competition for funding within the education sector as well as to attract motivated students and excellent personnel. The initial solution was characterised by a radical decentralisation of decision-making and responsibility to academic departments. Real executive power was also transferred to individual academic leaders, especially to the rector and heads of departments from the collegial councils, which were seen to be too slow and inefficient in the new environment (see Hölttä & Karjalainen 1997). 155 Information on efficiency as an aspect of self-regulation in university departments Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives on Higher Education Management and Transformation According to Hölttä and Karjalainen (1997), the system of flexible workload of university teachers was based on the idea of creating stabilising, self-correcting cybernetic control loops into the management system and building black boxes of hierarchical order at different levels of the organisation, while respecting disciplinary values and diversity of leadership cultures in an academic organisation. The most important issue in creating self-regulating control loops is that this information—which is usually most confidential and sensitive to individuals—is fed back to academic departments and heads of departments, with no involvement from administrators in its interpretation. The confidentiality of information production has been seen as essential because costs and outcomes can be assessed only within the department. Sometimes, high unit costs are deliberate and are a consequence of planning. For example, a teacher may be developing a new course and prepares supplementary material for students, or the study module in basic education may be offered only to a small number of students who might later require a certain specialisation at the post-graduate level. No expertise exists outside the department to interpret this detailed cost and output information (Hölttä & Karjalainen 1997). Information system The system produces information about the allocation of labour costs, even individual teachers and different institutional functions, and—within education—different study modules. This information is available in the system, which is aggregated at each organisational level, but the logic of hierarchical black boxes is followed. The most detailed information concerning individuals is available at the level of basic units only, and aggregated information on the whole department and teacher categories—professors, associate professors, lecturers, etc.—is produced for the use of deans of faculties and the rector of the university (Hölttä & Karjalainen 1997, 232–233). The integrated structure of the information systems allows a combination of output information with cost information. For each study module or 156 Timo Näppilä Elias Pekkola & Jussi Kivistö & Vuokko Kohtamäki & Yuzhuo Cai & Anu Lyytinen (Eds.) course, the number of students who passed, as well as credits performed, can be combined with the corresponding cost information, and the system calculates the unit costs for any desired level of aggregation—from a single module and individual to the level of the educational function and the university. This information is aimed especially at encouraging self-evaluation within departments as well as the assessment of costs and outcomes so as to support the next planning cycle within the departments (Hölttä & Karjalainen 1997, 232–233). Policy barriers to individual learning processes and autonomy In general, budgets and other management controls often maintain singleloop learning by monitoring expenditures, sales, profits and other indicators of performance to ensure that organisational activities remain within established limits. Especially bureaucratised organisations have fundamental organising principles that actually obstruct the learning process. Bureaucratisation tends to create fragmented patterns of thought and action. Situations in which policies and operating standards are challenged tend to be exceptions rather than the rule. Under these circumstances, single-loop learning systems are reinforced and may actually serve to keep an organisation on the wrong course (Morgan 1998, 79–81). Within the Finnish higher education system, several barriers and policies worked to prevent the autonomy of university units and their academics, including external (Ministry of Education) and internal (heads of departments, deans and rectors) controlling and steering (outputoriented degrees, publications, funding principles) and external and internal (managerial) supervision and (administrative) bureaucracy (personnel liability to practice cost accounting, to monitor their working hours and to report their performances) (see Kuoppala, Näppilä, & Hölttä 2010). 157 Information on efficiency as an aspect of self-regulation in university departments Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives on Higher Education Management and Transformation Theoretical assumptions of new cybernetics and system theories Autopoiesis An autopoietic system “grows” and maintains itself by reference to itself. It uses a self-referential circular process in a system of continuous self-making (Glanville 2008; Maturana & Varela 1980). “I” is the shortest self-referential loop. One creates oneself by creating oneself. “I” is the operator, who is the result of the operation (von Foerster 2003, 304). An autopoietic system is stable through its (dynamic) ability to keep on making itself anew (Glanville 2008). The basic goal of an organism’s behaviour is to maintain its own organisation, its identity, which enables the system to emerge (Brier 2008). According to von Glasersfeld (2002, based on Maturanas work), autopoietic systems are closed homeostatic systems with no input or output. The term “closure” is intended to indicate that the equilibrium of the autopoietic system may be perturbed from the outside, but there is no input or output of “information”; its actions are in the service of its homeostasis (inner equilibrium). Cognition as a process is constitutively linked to the organisation and structure of the cognising agent. What a cognitive organism comes to know is necessarily shaped by the concepts it has constructed (von Glasersfeld 2002, 13–14). The theory of autopoiesis accepts that systems can be recognised as having “environments”, but insists that relations with any environment are internally determined (Maturana & Varela 1980). A living system responds to its environment in ways determined by its autopoiesis. It constructs its environment through the domain of interactions made possible by its autopoietic organisation. A living system operates within the boundaries of an organisation that closes in on itself and leaves the world on the outside (see Vanderstraeten 2001, 299). 158 Timo Näppilä Elias Pekkola & Jussi Kivistö & Vuokko Kohtamäki & Yuzhuo Cai & Anu Lyytinen (Eds.) Self-organising “Intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself” (Piaget 1937, 311) and intelligence evolves (Morgan 1998, 86). According to Prigogine (1980; Prigogine & Stengers 1984), the self-organising system is in a constant state of chaos and order, i.e. it alternates between consecutive overlapping cycles of chaos and order and order and chaos. After organising itself and being driven into chaos, it re-organises and subsequently comes under threat and is driven into disorder, etc. In systems that are capable of self-organisation, entropy is necessary and indispensable. Entropy introduces uncertainty, imbalance and confusion into the system, and it is this very instability that gives the system its capacity for self-organisation (Glandsdorff & Prigogine 1971). It is the selfquestioning ability that underpins the activities of the system that enables it to learn (“double-loop” learning) and self-organise (see Morgan 1998, 78–79). Concerning dynamic, self-organising systems, Kauffman (1995; 2000) emphasises spontaneous and diversified networks, self-selection, self-oriented activity, self-interest and build-in purpose. According to Kauffman, living systems (autonomous agents) live on the edge-of-chaos. To renew themselves, these autonomous agents actively seek new opportunities and try to utilise these opportunities. Spontaneous and diversified networks will create possibilities for self-renewal. This self-interest should be balanced with the environment. Otherwise, spontaneous cooperation with the environment would be impossible. Second-order cybernetics In comparison to second-order cybernetics, first-order cybernetics may be seen as a limited case whereby the link from observed to observer is sufficiently weakened (or ignored). Under such circumstances, we assume that the observer simply observes what is going on, neutrally and unmoved, instead of changing behaviour in response to the observed. In second-order cybernetics, circularity becomes central, and a subject becomes its own object (or subject!). Control is circular, and the controller and controlled are roles determined by 159 Information on efficiency as an aspect of self-regulation in university departments Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives on Higher Education Management and Transformation an observer. Second-order cybernetics is developed when the understandings developed in cybernetics are applied to the subject itself, thus enhancing the subject. Self-reference is at the heart of second-order cybernetics and brings with it autonomy and identity (Glanville 2008). The constructivist theory of knowing, one of the cornerstones of secondorder cybernetics can be briefly summarised in the principle: Knowledge is the result of a cognitive agent’s active construction. Its purpose is not the representation of an external reality, but the generation and maintenance of the organism’s equilibrium. The value of knowledge cannot be tested by comparison with such an independent reality, but must be established by its viability in the world of experience (von Glasersfeld 2002). In a “second-order stipulation”, the observer enters the system by stipulating his own purpose. Social cybernetics must be a form of second-order cybernetics so that the observer who enters the system shall be allowed to stipulate his own purpose: he is autonomous. If we fail to do so, someone else will determine a purpose for us. Moreover, if we fail to do so, we shall provide excuses for those who want to transfer responsibility for their own actions to another. Finally, if we fail to recognise everyone’s autonomy, we may turn into a society that attempts to honour commitments and forgets about its responsibilities (von Foerster 1979). Information on efficiency as an aspect of self-regulation Self-regulation Contact with the environment is regulated by the autopoietic system; the system determines when, what and through what channels energy or matter is exchanged with the environment (Maturana & Varela 1980). For example, the nervous system is organised (or organises itself) so that it computes a stable reality. This postulate stipulates “autonomy”, that is “self-regulation”, for every living organism. “Autonomy” becomes synonymous with the “regulation of 166 Timo Näppilä Elias Pekkola & Jussi Kivistö & Vuokko Kohtamäki & Yuzhuo Cai & Anu Lyytinen (Eds.)